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It's happened. This morning, Sun Microsystems announced plans to acquire MySQL AB. Reactions have been mixed, including excitement, pride, disbelief and satisfaction, but also anxiety.

Sun has been a leader in the open source community, just look at: Java, OpenSolaris, Open Office / Star Office, GlassFish app server, and the NetBeans IDE for starters. So, it can't be all bad that they've acquired MySQL, right?

The question stirring up some anxiety is: will MySQL’s support for other programming languages and operating systems now be given less attention due to Sun's vested interest in, and success with, Java and Solaris?

Here's the answer from Sun's blog:

Absolutely not. MySQL is still being managed by the same people, and the charter is still the same. There is no need for reducing the set of platforms or languages. It only makes sense for us to continue to support defacto Web development standards like LAMP, as well as emerging ones like Ruby and Eclipse. This deal is about addition, not subtraction.

What does all of this mean for the developer community? Hopefully just some added value to MySQL due to the immediate access to technical, marketing, OSS developer relations it will now have.

Read more about the acquisition over at Kaj Arno's MySQL blog or the press announcement on Sun's website.